Don Mattingly has a refreshing perspective on not being in the Hall of Fame

LAS VEGAS — In a lot of ways, Harold Baines getting elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday night was a win for the fringe. Like Baines, there are plenty of very-good players who never could get enough support for a spot in Cooperstown.

If you came across a fringe Hall of Famer in the hours after Baines’ election, there’s a good chance they were getting asked the same question: Does Baines getting in give you new hope?

For Don Mattingly, the former New York Yankees great and current Miami Marlins manager, the Hall of Fame clearly isn’t a priority these days — regardless of Baines’ election. In fact, he has a refreshing perspective on the whole thing.

“I don’t worry much about myself from the whole situation,” Mattingly said Monday during his winter meetings manager scrum. “Because quite honestly, the Hall of Fame comes, if you get in, you say, OK, write HOF on the ball, and after that your life’s going to be the same. You’re not really changing. Who you are is who you are.”

Mattingly was re-examined last year by the Modern Baseball era committee, the same type of committee that voted in Baines and Lee Smith on Sunday. Mattingly didn’t get close to election in 2017, which is when Jack Morris and Alan Trammell were voted in and when fellow fringers such as Dale Murphy, Luis Tiant and Ted Simmons also didn’t meet the threshold.

There are some shortcomings in Mattingly’s case. For instance, injuries shortened his career and he was done at 34. His 2,153 hits and 222 homers fall short of usual Cooperstown benchmarks. But his career WAR was better than Baines: 42.4 vs. 38.7.

“When you see Harold, played 22 years or something like that and you end up with a pile of numbers that grow and grow, you know, I think Harold had 2,800 hits,” Mattingly said. “I hit 21-something, I do it in 13 years, 12 years, less than 13. I just didn’t play long enough. Wasn’t able to stay healthy long enough to really put that pile of numbers together.”

And that’s not Mattingly complaining. That’s Mattingly accepting his place in what some people like to call the Hall of Very Good and staying above the fray in an often volatile debate about Cooperstown worthiness.

The Hall of Fame is great, he says, but there are other metrics by which he tries to measure himself.

“I look at myself honestly more as I want to be a good dad,” Mattingly said. “I want to be a good teacher. I want to be a good coach. I want to be a good manager, whatever that is. That’s not going to change because of you put HOF on a ball. So honestly, once it’s all said and done, you’ve played all your cards, you live your life and you really want to be happy with that.”

Now that’s a Hall of Fame perspective.

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Mike Oz is a writer at Yahoo Sports. Contact him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz

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